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| In Mountain (NOT Border mountains) provinces the Cave Fort is available .It's admin and supply are measly, but its high defense means Pale One Soldiers can hold it for quite a long time against a larger force. Unfortunately, on random maps you will only see border provinces, at least at v. 3.08. It's on the expensive side though. I would NOT recommend making this your first fort. However... there are certain circumstances where its value jumps dramatically. A iron Mine, for instance. Or the Vaults Beneath (150 resources). Or some indies, or special site recruits. When that bug with auto darkness is fixed, if it isn't already, these will be extremely hard to take from you, barring a few nations.
Your Swamp Fort is abysmal- but cheap at 800 gold and 3 turns. It has absolutely 0 admin value. However, its not a bad place to put a library and temple, pumping out mages. If you want to double up your research early this is an option, albeit one that hamstrings troop production and vulnerable to attack. On the plus side, you could put one up next to a better fort, such as your capital, and it will hardly affect production. Your Forest Fortress is not a bad choice. It's hardly ideal, but considering forests are high in resources and it goes up in four turns and 1000 gold, this is a decent production choice. If you haven't grabbed all the provinces in the area, its superior to a fortified city, but only by a small margin. I'd rank it above the Cave Fort, since it's somewhat less expensive, and goes up a turn earlier. 8.12.2.1.2.7 Scales Scale ratings: Order: It helps, but less than other civilizations. You don't have much chaff, your standard infantry all costs 10 gold and your mages sacred, so you won't be spending much on upkeep. You'll be relying on summons who don't need chaff, anyways. There aren't many situations where you'd want turmoil. Productivity: It's a heck of a lot more meaningful than order, but needn't be in every build. If you're going with a dormant pretender, or need to expand quickly in your strategy, this is a good choice. If you're not planning much expansion, and have a supercombatant, there's no problem taking a little sloth. I wouldn't take more than one, though. Heat: Heat's good for your coldblooded units, but bad for your cavern wights and mages. I'd take heat one, or neutral. Some people may take more. Cold is just bad. Growth: Never take more than death one. Higher death scales kill your Golem Crafters ridiculously fast. I'd only take Death if I had magic 3, since I could use indeps and Earth Readers for research. Growth, on the other hand, is nice. It does the obvious, but also makes it a little harder for your Golem Crafters to die off. However, I've never needed the extra supplies. It sometimes seems like a waste. Luck: You're going to take misfortune, often. In the vanilla game, MA Agartha has no heroes that I'm aware of. You have to download a mod to get any. And you've got all the gems you really _need_, if not want. So there's little benefit to luck. Even with misfortune one, you can get good events frequently. Though when you lose two provinces to earthquakes/troglodytes, you'll hate it. Misfortune three is dangerous. Magic: You can benefit from tilting this scale in both directions. Taking a high magic scale will allow you to cast lots of spells, research better (or younger), and make the enemy more vulnerable to spells from most paths of magic. Drain scale can be used to your advantage. First, only two earth spells target magic resistance, therefore, your spells remain effective while spells like Opposition fail more often. Second, earthpower grants +4 reinvig, and earth blesses anywhere from 2 to 5 on all your sacred mages. With A1N1 (random possible), you can forge Rainbow Armor (enc1, invig3), and n1- available anywhere- you can forge Birch Boots(invig2), Boots of the Messenger (invig4). There's also the Girdle of Might (+3)x2. Unfortunately, you don't have great researchers, so drain will cost you. You'll have to plan around that somehow. Dominion strength- higher is better, of course, but don't strain yourself too hard. You Golems start out tough. Blesses: Fire is again, one of the better all around blesses, helping everybody but your mages. Fire 4 is a big help. Air is of use only to mages and Ancient Ones, but considering how vulnerable they are to arrows, is another good choice. Shock resistance is irrelevant. Water benefits your your ancient ones, and your golems. While your golems have enough protection to not need defense, fewer open-ended die rolls are always a good thing. And quickness doesn't hurt, either. Earth is troublesome. Reinvigoration helps your mages and Sacred ones, but the problem with the high level protection bonus is that it is applied to armor, not natural protection. Golems receive no benefit whatsover from this bless. An astral bless is wonderful. Magic resistance is always handy, and Twist Fate won't win you battles, but will cut mage casulties. You know, that one lucky arrow that hits your stoneskinned mage in a clump of soldiers and does ten damage, gibbing all your golems if he was the last one? Death bless isn't really worht talking about, but can make enemies very cautious about attacking with their pretender. Your strong dominion + Ancient Lord w/Gate Cleaver + 100 bless equals wounds. That said, it seems the affliction rate affects spells too, not just melee. There are ways to take advantage of this. Believe it or not, I'm under the opinion that your pretender design and scales aren't that important to Agartha's early game. Though they will, of course have a long-term and short-term affect. And you can do very different things early on - a Wyrm Astral-3 is a SC. But for simplicity's sake the basic strategy I'll outline assumes you'll have a pretender like this - And I've deliberately left the cost low, so you can tweak, play around and experiment in a easy SP game. Not because this is a viable MP build, just a puny baseline to compare against. Dummy, my Baseline Pretender An Awake Crone (350/350), with 2 points Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Astral. Default 1 point death. Total RP 14 (costs 130, 220/350) Dominion 5 (costs 70, 150/350) Magic Scale 1 (costs 40, 110/350) Standard game settings, random events -> Rare gold is unpredicatable, as result of random event. turn 1, spring dummy, 14 -> research -> enchantment recruit golem crafter, 7 LI
recruit golem crafter, 7 LI (179 gold left) 21->enchantment
recruit golem crafter, 7LI, (186 gold left) 28-> enchantment
recruit golem crafter, 7LI (213 gold left) 35-> enchantment
42-> enchantment with crone, 28 without, only 102 rp until Attentive Statues Here, you can start searching with your crone, recruiting other commanders, and get attentive statues by Earl Winter early fall (74), fall (46), late fall(18), early winter (-10), winter (-38), late winter (-66), and still get 28 RP/a turn. This is what I'd do, recruiting two earth readers, and sending them & my current pretender out to research. Or, if you recruit another golem crafter, and keep with the research, you'll get attentive statues by Late Fall. early fall -42 (60), fall -49 (11), late fall -56 (-38), early winter -63 (-101), winter -70 (-171), and late winter, enchantment four. You'll start year two with up to 84 rp/turn (if crone's still researching). In this sample game, I didn't expand any, or overtax, but I regularly recruited troops, to show you what you can achieve. If this was a more chaff oriented, non-sacred nation, then you probably couldn't afford all this. In a real game, you'll have a totally different pretender, and likely, better scales. With a dormant pretender and 5 rp a turn (mag3, earth readers, drain1, golem crafters), you can achieve about (0+55)/2*11 = 302 by the end of the first year. That's enchant 3, 58 points away from enchant 4. In most games, your strategy will actually depend on a) your pretender, and b) your terrain. On a random map, you may be stuck with three crappy, low resource connecting provinces. It may be worth your while to pinch pennies and hire mercenaries, to compensate for a complete lack of recruitable troops. In other situations, you'll have independent or mercenary researchers to pitch in. With a high magic scale, seriously consider setting up a sacred-research indie as an early research station instead of throwing up another fort. Pretender Commentary- practical advice Risen Oracle: the most common choice, and for good reason. Unfortunately limited in magic paths, he comes with fear, so each point of death goes straight into a boost. Remember fear also gets stronger every +5, whether its natural or boosted. Doesn't add much to your golems, though will open up a poison golem. Opens up Skull Mentor, Skull Staff, and other nice artifacts that will help with darkness and drain strategies. Generally better than lichs, unless you find yourself needing very high death. Sacred Statue: Great potential lies in the astral path, but the difficulty of finding astral gems will hamper you. Alchemy can be used to help, and get rid of those unusable gems. For your very first Astral Pretender, you'd be better off with an Great Enchantress. Oracle: Four accessory slots, but 20 hitpoints. You won't be teleporting it around, but you probably won't have the gems to do so, anyways. Better choice than the Sacred Statue. Try this once you've practiced with a Great Enchantress. Wyrm: A classic. Everything to be said, already has. Combines well with nearly every path of magic. Has two heads - something to keep in mind. Want an easy supercombatant? Titan: Opens up watchers, bless is great for your mages and Ancient ones, not so hot for golems, though the golems don't need them nearly as much. Worth a second look, despite the poor thematic match. Also opens up those Owl Quills you'll need if you take any drain. Sample pretenders - perhaps not the best, but fun enough for single player or a relaxed multiplayer game. Forge Lord (dormant) Fire 5, Earth 5, Dominion 6, Productivity 3, Magic 1. Basic goal is to reach construction 2 and enchant 3 (total 300 RP) around the the time your Pretender awakens. Meanwhile, you'll be depending on infantry or heavy infantry to expand. First have have him forge a Dwarven Hammer, then start churning out artifacts, and kitting your Ancient Lords. Dedicate your mages to researching and casting battle magic. Eventually, you'll have access to Earth Attack, King of Elemental Earth, King of Elemental Fire, Melancholia, Volcanic Eruption, Raging Hearts, Purgatory (With a flame helmet), Forge of the Ancients, Mechanical Militia, Riches from Beneath, Earth Blood Deep Well (earth boots). If you're not interested in globals, you can take a point of heat (good for your Ancient Lords anyway), drop a point of productivity, take 7 dom, and take 4 earth, 4 fire, and either air or water. You now can forge the staff of Elemental Mastery, and boost your Golem Crafters even further. With staff, Helmet, Boots, and Robe of the Sea/Water Bracelet, you've got a FFFWWWEEEE mage. Not bad- still, quite expensive. Though way too many options for just one mage, who'll die of old age. Earth boots is all they need for Magma Eruption. And you can STILL get forge of the ancients and Hammer of the Forge Lord. This will get you Acid Rain, Acid Storm (with water gems, and golems have no armor to be destroyed), get Curse of the Desert, Grip of Winter, Curse of Stones, Heat from Hell, Prison of Fire. Is short, all sorts of ways of ways to mess with your opponents. On a mage one arrow will kill. Base costs: Dwarven Hammer (15), Earth Boots (10), Robe of the Sea (15), Flame Helmet (25), Staff of Elemental Mastery(25,25), Hammer of the Forge Lord (25, 15), Forge of the Ancients (80). However, if you get the Forge of Ancients up, the Hammer of the Forge Lord, The Staff of Elemental Mastery can be forged for only 3,3. If you find one of the forging sites... The mechanics of forge bonuses are discussed elsewhere in these forums, but there's a limit of 10%. With only a 50% bonus, and Forge of the Ancients, a Ember blade would cost 2,2. With the 75 bonus reachable by a Forge Lord and Forge of the Ancients, that comes down to 1,1. Your Golem Crafters with Dwarven Hammers and Forge of the Ancient comes to 3,3. So... Overkill? It's certainly a little easier to get up and running with the forge lord. And you can waste time forging 5 gem items for free. The problem is, this is all practically endgame. At least the bless isn't useless. Good diplo build, though arming your eventual enemies is always a questionable tactic. You'll come out on top of any item exchange. Though people will consider you stingy if you keep your best (Dwarven Hammer?) items to yourself, its worth considering in a MP game. It is possible to pull off by year four, though I didn't do a great job of orchestrating my test game, and went about it all wrong. Other people, please mention a build for people to try. And state whether its competitive or fun. I'm trying to put together a blood strat, myself, but it requires a bit of work and experimentation. -> Pretender note 1 How about this pretender for MA Agartha? A imprisioned fountain with S4 N9, which gives a blessing of regeneration+15%, berserk+2, +1 magic resistance, +2 morale. Dominion 9 with scales of Order-3, Prod-2, Heat-3, Growth-2, Misfortune-3 and Magic-1. Your ancient ones are pretty tough with reg+15% and berserk+2. The main thing about the berserk is it raises the attack of ancient ones to 11 and gives them a little extra protection. All your summoned sacreds should enjoy this bless too. Initially make your cave captain your prophet so he can divine bless and expand with him. Soon after you can make another army up of ancient ones with a earth reader leading them. Place upto 20 ancient ones on hold attack, script earth reader with blessx3, flying shardsx2, cast spells. This is capable of conquering most indies. Aim to produce 9 Ancient ones a turn ASAP, any left over resources build your heaviest infantry. Long term you should aim towards your unique national summons plus anything else that benefit from your 9 dominion golem cult. Lightless lanterns + skull mentors to speed your research up. Umbrals for raiding/assaulting other nations. Globals Earth Deep Blood Well, Forge of ancients and Gift of Health, Gift of Bounty (your pretender can cast). Gift of Health, gift of bounty, golem cult, a bless strategy on your ancient ones all go together so well with dominion 9. You even get awe on your fountain. Your magic paths are fairly diverse with Earth, Nature, Astral, Water, Fire, Death all accessable from your mages or pretender. You can use mercenaries or summons to fill in the rest if you wish. This would be fun to play in SP and may be competitive in MP if you are left alone long enough to get rolling. Your blessed ancients would be good enough early on to deter attack. 8.12.2.1.2.8 Early game As MA Agartha, research is very tempting, thanks to your earth income. But I must say, resist, at least for a short while. The very first thing I'm going to do in my next few games is recruit lowly scouts- at least two, depending on geography. This will do two things for you - save some gold for projects like additional castles or dealing with events, and let you make an informed research decision. If you're only three provinces from Jotunheim, for instance, Evocation 3 is crucial (for Magma Bolts), while lesser earth elementals, or Attentive Statues will be next to useless. Research into enchantment or conjuration or alteration will be next to useless, unless you've got some particular short-term strategy around that. On the other hand, if you expect to be rushed by a smaller race, Lesser Earth Elementals can come in handy thanks to trampling. And for 10 earth gems, you can spawn five off of a single lowly earth reader, saving you further gold compared to a golem crafter or Oracle of the Ancients. And if you've got a decent buffer of indies, you can just decide what chokepoints you need to seize first while you diligently toil away towards your strategic research goal- most likely Enlivened Sentinels or Attentive Statues. If you go straight for Attentive Statues, you'll regret it if you start hazardously close to a race with a natural counter. Trampling, perhaps? Jotunheim with ~22 strength certainly doesn't have to worry much about 22 protection opponents. Knowledge is power - you must know your opponent before you can know yourself - blah blah blah. Diplomacy is your best bet, but sometimes locations just don't allow for that, and it won't work at all in singleplayer. 8.12.2.1.2.9 8.12.2.2 go punch a mountain Article Author: Baalz Agartha is a challenging nation to play because of their stark contrasts. They have both obvious strong strengths and obvious crippling weaknesses, to successfully play them one must be able to effectively leverage the former while getting around the latter. Properly balanced though, MA Argatha has everything needed to be a dominating power. The way I like to think about it, fighting Argatha should feel like fighting with a mountain. All you accomplish is bloody knuckles and winding yourself. Now, just to head this off at the pass I¿ve got no interest in arguing who came up with what ideas as some of this has been discussed in a recent thread, this is my take on a comprehensive strategy for MA Argatha and there¿s probably not an idea in here that a dozen people haven¿t had before. This guide is geared towards CBM. The most obvious weakness is their national troops. They just plain suck, and by default will struggle against even indies. This is a bit of an exception for a nation with giants, but the ancient one¿s low attack and size 4 coupled with a dinky little spear (which results in them dealing no more damage than a good human with a high damage weapon) makes their offense atrocious. They lack any archers whatsoever, the smaller pale ones are even worse than the big ones (an 8 attack!), and their human infantry is on par with indie infantry. Clearly these guys are not going to be winning any wars for you. Now, the obvious choice in this situation is to take an awake pretender, and if you choose to go that route it¿s a very tough sell to go with anything other than the risen oracle. The charms of this unit are obvious and well known so I won¿t belabor them, but I also want to point out how terribly expensive that awesomeness is. 150 points, on first glance seems expensive but not that bad, thing is you have to consider the other costs. 1) Obviously you¿ll want to start out awake. 2) The magic paths you get do nothing for your magic diversity, and new paths cost you 60 points. 3) Not only do the paths do nothing for your diversity, they don¿t do much for your bless options. True, an earth bless could be nice, but specifically fire is a great blessing for Argatha, and a minor nature very nice. You can make it work with a risen oracle, but I think you can do better by focusing on Argatha¿s strengths. Consider a build like this: sleeping forge lord with F4 E4 S4 B4. Turmoil-3, Cold-3, Growth-3, Luck-3, Magic-1 with a 7 dominion. This is probably a bit counterintuitive and has some room for alteration to better align with whatever your playstyle is, but bear with me and I¿ll explain the odd choices. First off, as you look at those scales realize I don¿t plan on doing much with those crappy national troops. That blessing will turn the ancient ones into decent troops for assaulting enemy fortresses (out of your cold dominion, supported by other troops), but really the only concession I make to the troops is *not* taking sloth-3, and this is solely to give me at least some initial expansion. Your initial expansion is going to be using your human infantry, and I¿ll tell you right now it¿s gonna be slow probably the slowest in the game if everyone¿s at the same skill level. This is the weakest part of Agartha¿s game and I didn¿t help it by gearing my design choices towards mid/late game power. Still, in sufficient numbers your infantry isn¿t *that* bad, and without having sloth scales you can build up critical mass. It works a lot better if you resign yourself to a slow initial expansion and don¿t try to send out expansion parties with less than critical mass. Those Agarthan light infantry actually do a pretty decent job against indies so long as they outnumber them. Now, I¿d like to talk about the first of my ¿controversial¿ design choices. Turmoil/luck. Plenty people feel like this is never a competitive choice, but I think this is the perfect situation to use it. Consider that you¿re expanding slowly and probably avoiding the highest income (and best defended) territories, the primary advantage of taking an order scale initially is the income from your capital. While this is not inconsiderable, the income bonus from luck isn¿t either. Additionally, Agartha has some very nice national heroes, a couple of which will greatly improve your initial expansion if you luck into them early, and will greatly compliment your magic diversity as they show up through the game. Finally, while gold is always very useful, this is a nation who can go a long way on a little gold, what you really want is gems. After your initial expansion you¿re not going to be recruiting many troops at all, and while more golem crafters are always welcome they¿re cheap and holy so you can field a respectable number of them on a modest gold income. This strategy is still viable if you decide to go with order/misfortune, but in this situation I prefer turmoil/luck. So, in that light, it¿s no surprise that I¿m also going to say to get out there site searching early. Golem crafters make surprisingly good manual site searchers with an emphasis on what you need the most urgently - earth gems. Have a couple out site searching some mountains while everybody else researches enchantment and by the end of year one you¿ll likely be sitting on a hundred E gems and closing in on ench-4. Now, as painful as it is you¿re probably also going to want to overlap that site searching with an oracle of the ancients. This is terribly expensive for a manual D1 site search, but it¿s the only way (unless you get that nice national hero early) to prime the pump for your remote site searching. After you land just one or two D sites pull him back and just research until dark knowledge is done. You¿ve got fairly light access to D magic, but it¿s enough to do your site searching and with the boosters you¿re forging later on (more on that in a bit) you should certainly consider yourself a death power. At this point you¿ve expanded very slowly and the indies are running out, but your pretender has just awoke and you¿ve got the first of your national summons available. At this point of the game a force of attentive statues (shields) and enlivened statues (heavy hitters) is very difficult for many nations to deal with. Avoid picking a fight with anybody fielding heavy air mages and there¿s not a lot of effective combat spells against them at this level and they¿re plenty tough enough to chew up most enemy troops when heavily outnumbered. You¿ve also conveniently researched strength of giants which stacks on your blood and fire minor blessing, their high strength and good weapon to bring your sentinels up to 29 damage and a 13 attack¿with a 22 protection and hitpoints pushing 50. Your attentive statues don¿t have the same offense or hitpoints, but they do have a big old shield and are half the price, so they work nicely together. Granite guardians give you 50% more hitpoints than the sentinel for the price (2 sentinels for 1 guardian), but sacrifice half your offense, so they each have their uses. Very broadly you¿ll want sentinels at first then switch to guardians as your golem crafters gain the research to be the damage dealers. Sentinels certainly have a role through the whole game though. Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
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